Report on arrest from Erica Weitzman 23 August 2002

I had a dream last night. Just an image really, as I was napping on the couch at the military camp waiting for the police to come. A dozen IDF soldiers stood on the roof of a building; each one held a slab of asphalt high above their heads. When I woke—it was time to go to the station, finally—I understood that the slabs were slabs of the road that the army had torn up with a bulldozer and shoved against the houses two nights ago in Askar: against the doors, as if they wanted to bury the people inside alive. In my dream, the soldiers held them up like Moses displaying the commandments.

I can't express how surreal it is to be sitting in a clean, stylish apartment in suburban East Jerusalem, a full brunch in my stomach and clean clothes on me for the first time in weeks: safe, paralyzed, in exile.

Last night is comical now, or a strange dream. But it's not about me. The army is getting more and more annoyed by international presence in the West Bank: I heard only a few minutes ago that another international had been arrested from Nablus, and when the soldiers were talking to us yesterday, they effectively said that they would arrest any international in the Nablus area. The entire city and its environs has been designated—in the army's capriciously executed policy—a closed military zone. If the IDF applies this with any consistency, that would mean that all the Occupied Territories will be closed to all outside witnesses. Right now, Israeli accountability is minimal at best: if no one is left but the army and the Palestinians they keep under siege that accountability will drop to nil.

Yesterday I went with Jeremy (from NY and JATO), Saif (a Palestinian guy living in Askar: he teaches poetry, drama and music as a volunteer at the children's summer camp there), and two journalists—Suha, a Palestinian Israeli and Fiona, a Canadian—to another occupied house in Nablus.

From the hill, you can see straight across the valley to another of the occupied houses: the army rings the city with these ad hoc bases. The army refused us entry right away. "Didn't you know it's curfew?" they said. "No one is allowed to be in Nablus." They wouldn't let us in to talk to the family living in the house, nor would they let the family out to talk to them; they insisted that the family had all the supplies they wanted, and that the army paid rent to the family for the occupation of their home (facts which contradict everything we have heard directly from other families whose homes the army has commandeered). When we offered to leave of our own free will, the soldiers informed us that they would take us out of the city themselves. I had my passport on me still, and thought I should get Seif, at least, out of the situation—especially after we saw three Palestinian men exit the house, one blindfolded and handcuffed behind his back—so we walked away from the house. We weren't 50 meters away when two tanks pulled up and ordered us in. After 2 minutes, we were back in front of the occupied house again.

Suha speaks Hebrew and could overhear everything the soldiers were saying about us. After they found out my last name, the commander constantly referred to me—to the other soldiers—as "the Jewish bitch." The soldiers made obscene jokes to each other in Hebrew about how I was sleeping with Palestinians. At one point, I didn't want to let my passport out of my hands. "If she doesn't give the passport," she reported the commander as saying, "beat her."

Eventually the soldiers took me, Suha and Fiona in an APC to a military camp 20 km west of Nablus, right outside one of the many illegal settlements here. The soldiers had already detained Seif and led him into the occupied house—today I found out that he spent 5 hours, from 3 to 8pm, blindfolded and in handcuffs while he was beaten and interrogated, before the soldiers eventually let him go. Suha, Fiona and I sat at the military camp until 10 o' clock at night. Suha told me she overheard the soldiers saying to each other to treat us nice, because it wouldn't look good if they maltreated us; instead, they should let us "dry out." Which is what we did. While we were waiting, we talked to some of the soldiers. The 20-year old who was assigned to guard us told us, " I hate the Knesset, it's totally dominated by the religious fanatics, who decide everything. I hate the settlements.

But I'm just a soldier: what can I do? I wanted to become a soldier so I could change things, be the one giving the orders not to just make people's lives difficult." "But it didn't work out that way," I said. "It didn't work out that way," he said.

To make a long story short: at around 10 o' clock, we were brought to the police station in Ariel, held there, questioned, and released with charges dropped after 3 hours. After another 2 hours trying to get to

Jerusalem (extended negotiations with a police officer who at first took us for prostitutes, then the police car dropped us at a checkpoint, from where the soldiers called us a taxi), we arrived here.

I can't go back to the West Bank now, at least not now, not without risking real arrest and definite deportation. I hope my fears that the army will start rounding up all internationals prove false. Even if they do prove false, it won't change the fact that the IDF still exercises almost unchecked power in the Occupied Territories. I can see, even from the brief time I was there, that the situation is getting worse: as the days of curfew stretch on, as the gunfire goes on all night, as new roadblocks crop up every morning, as the money and food run out, as more houses are demolished, as more Palestinians are detained, arrested, tortured, shot. I am outside, away from all that now. No Palestinian can get outside.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT - www.palsolidarity.org